Active in the NAACP and in local civil rights marches, Jerrelene Williamson, 83, felt akin to civil rights marchers led by Martin Luther King Jr. and today supports protests across the country related to police shooting unarmed African American young men.

“We were not in the marches with Martin Luther King Jr., but our hearts, minds and souls were there,” she said. “We knew that as things became better elsewhere, they would be better for everyone.”

So she considers the March on Washington and the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma part of her heritage.

“What happened there was and still is important here,” she said. “There will always be something, so we need to be alert.”

Jerrelene likens what is happening between police and black young men across the country to what is happening in Spokane where, she said, black young men are stopped too frequently.... . . . More